Ranking 49ers 5 best NFL Draft picks by John Lynch, Kyle Shanahan

The San Francisco 49ers have used many avenues to build up from one of the NFL’s worst rosters to Super Bowl contenders in just a few years. One of the key ways they’ve done so is through the NFL Draft. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the best picks from the current front office.

As is the case with most NFL teams, the San Francisco 49ers needed a lot of things to break their way in order to go from four straight years as a bottom-10 team in the league to representing the NFC in the Super Bowl in 2019.

The front office, led by general manager John Lynch and head coach Kyle Shanahan, had to make shrewd decisions in free agency, along with continuing to build up the core group of players that was already in place when they arrived, such as defensive lineman DeForest Buckner and safeties Jimmie Ward and Jaquiski Tartt.

But they also needed to make good use of the draft capital they had heading into the 2017 NFL Draft, their first as a leadership group, and those they’d add over the course of that draft and in future years.

To be honest, they haven’t always gotten those picks right. Some of the early picks in the 2017 draft didn’t exactly pan out to desired expectations, and there were other players who fizzled out and never quite reached expectations. As such, an initial plan to rank the top-10 draft picks Lynch and Shanahan had selected together proved difficult.

Hence the top-5 instead.

But when they have been good, they have often been very good, as the rankings that follow will reveal. And these players have all proven to be instrumental parts of the 49ers team which made the Super Bowl last season and look to be part of a group of contenders for years to come.